Bluebell / A Novel

by Mrs. G. C. Huddleston

"Harry!" cried Bluebell, rubbing her eyes, as if only just thoroughly awake, "have you got a house? Where in the world are we going to?"

"I couldn't think why you didn't ask that before, you little fatalist, taking it all in such a predestined way. I hope you don't think it a case of the Lord of Burleigh over again? It is only a cottage, Bluebell; but I think it is comfortable, and one mercy is no one will be able to find us here!"

The extreme advantage of this isolation scarcely seemed so apparent to her; and as the above sentence was the only connected or rational one Harry gave utterance to, conversation, properly so called, was nil during the drive. After skirting a hanging wood, and passing some water meadows, where red Herefordshire cows with white faces grazed under the low wintry sky, they drove through a primitive village, and, turning down a bye-road, drew up at a queer gabled cottage. It was very picturesque and odd-looking, and Harry, during his last leave home, had spent a night there on a visit to an artist friend, who was making sketches in the neighbourhood.

Its proprietor, a carpenter, sometimes lived in it, and sometimes was able to let it to gentlemen coming down to fish in the river. On receiving Dutton's telegram, he and his wife, who had given up all hopes of letting it for the winter, gladly laid down their best carpets, brought out their summer chintzes, and arranged everything in apple-pie order, for the cottage was taken for a month certain.

Harry had not forgotten to order a piano to be hired from the nearest town. After their long journey it all looked very home-like and attractive. They ran about the house like two children, examining everything. The sitting-room was the prettiest, with its two bay-windows at right-angles, low roof and rafters. The artist had gone abroad, and had left some of his pictures on the wall in charge of the carpenter—a bewitched Greuze, copied in the Louvre; the inevitable study of a bird's-nest and primroses; a girl standing at a wash-tub by an open window, on the sill of which outside leaned an Irish peasant, with his handsome, blarneying face. Then there were sketches taken in the neighbourhood. "I remember this one half finished on his easel," said Harry. It was a glade of a forest; in the fore-ground a huge oak, knee-deep in bracken, and tall blue hyacinths. "Look Bluebell, here is your name-sake flower."

"Oh, that is it! Well, I never saw one before; we have none in Canada."

"I wish it were June now," said Harry; "summer weather is what this place wants;" and he glanced out of the bay-window looking on a lawn, with a spreading cedar encircled by a seat. Some pinched chrysanthemums—those flowers that always look born in adverse circumstances—and one or two hardy roses still lingered. The clematis made a bold show on the porch, though the north wind had begun to detach its clinging embrace from the masonry, and make wild work in its tangled masses.

"It must be lovely in summer," said Bluebell, shivering, and feeling a slightly depressing influence creeping over her. They wandered out by the banks of the river to a ruined abbey, which always attracted tourists during the season. It was especially sketchable, and "bits" of it were carried away in many an artist's portfolio. But it was desolate now, and flocks of jackdaws came screaming out of holes in the walls.

I am painting from Bluebell's point of view, who could not shake off the weird feeling that possessed her, to which, perhaps, fatigue, mental and physical, not a little contributed. Yet when they came in no depression could withstand the cheery look of the lamp-lit room, with its snowy cloth laid for dinner, blazing fire, and closely-drawn curtains; and they both were unmistakably hungry, for the breakfast they had been too nervous to eat had been their only previous meal.

The carpenter waited. Bluebell felt desperately conscious. His manner was so benign and protecting, and he coughed so ostentatiously before entering the room, she was perfectly sure he had guessed that they had run away that morning. He imparted shreds of local information to Harry while changing the plates, who answered good-humouredly, but would have preferred to hear that the whole neighbourhood was wintering in Jericho. A sociable Skye terrier, who strolled in with the first dish, was rather a resource to the new-made bride, who found it easier to bend over Archie, sitting up for bones, than to sustain with imperturbability the curious if furtive observation of the carpenter.